Thanks to that, I could do my alternative days running thus far, keeping myself healthy and fit at the same time.
By shifting our physical environment, we can in a way direct our thinking differently as well. For example, I was much less stressful over there than here, being the pace of life is much slower and lesser regulated. Of course, if you are a local, you would think otherwise. I was shocked when my in-laws began bargaining for a 10% discount for buying a pair of shoes for my kids. Nothing wrong except this is a department store. They insisted to see the manager when the salesgirl said no. How interesting. Eventually, we did not get the discount and still pay the full price. Haha.
My mother in law was right when she said we should not say things are cheap in her hometown compared to SG. The income they get in RMB is equally low to begin with. Taking the public bus for adults is 1rmb which is 0.20 in SGD. Probably, that would be the fare in the 60's or 70's here in SG. Children sit for free, which is really nice and seniors pay 0.25rmb with their senior card. Most elderly in their 50s-60s are likely retired unlike here in SG where most are doing some work, whether for money sake or not. They are much more relaxed, going to the parks, playing cards, etc. Perhaps, they have lesser restrictions , I think.
Being business minded, I was excited to visit my wife cousin pet shop one day. It was wrong of me to use SG standard to compare to his shop which would be run down, unhygienic and unprofessional to say the least in my own words. But during the half an hour or so while we were there, he had 2 regular customers visiting him. One was for grooming and the other was a short term stay. I could see his relationship with them was quite good, speaking in local language and of course he knew his products/services well. He told us that he was expanding his business and more people would be keeping pets as income grow. I am happy for him as he is an enterprising young chap, carving out his own niche despite not doing well academically.